


creatures lie here

by abovetheruins



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied Child Death, Nightmares, Unconventional Coping Methods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 20:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4151625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abovetheruins/pseuds/abovetheruins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike needs some closure. He's not the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	creatures lie here

**Author's Note:**

> Started this before any news of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2/3/4 came out. This is merely my interpretation of events after night six (disregarding the custom night and the ability to tinker with the animatronics' settings). Title from Meg and Dia’s ['Monster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0GRhK3W0_Y).'

Most nights Mike doesn't sleep at all, has to rely on the bottle of pills on his nightstand to get any relief from his insomnia. Wants to pour the whole fucking thing down his throat most days.

He wakes in fits and starts whether he takes the damn things or not, eyes wild, limbs twisted in the sheets, knuckles white around the battered baseball bat he keeps tucked against his side.

He sees things, in the dark. Glowing eyes, manic grins, the flash of a hook in the corner of his eye. He hears things, too: music coming from nowhere, laughter in the dark, the hum of a melody he would remember for the rest of his goddamn life.

It took six days for Mike to reach the end of his rope, six days for him to finally say 'fuck it' and walk out the doors of _Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria_ for the last time. He told others about that hellish week, about the _things_ creeping around inside that restaurant. No one believed him. No one in their right mind would, he supposes.

He finds another shitty job, one where he doesn't have to worry about death or dismemberment on a nightly basis. He's always tired, relying on the pills to get any sleep and feeling irritable and paranoid throughout the day. His coworkers think he's some kind of freak; they steer clear of him in the break room and don't bother trying to talk to him, but Mike's fine with that. Can't hold a conversation anyway, not with Freddy looming over someone's shoulder, Chica grinning at him from over the counter, **IT'S ME** plastered to all the goddamn walls. A shake of his head usually disperses the visuals, but by then the damage is already done. A therapist would probably call them hallucinations, if Mike could afford one. Then again, even a therapist would think Mike is a fucking psycho.

He leaves all the lights on in his apartment. It's hell on his electricity bill. Mike doesn't care. Darkness means fear. Darkness means danger. Foxy likes to stare at him from the crack in his closet door. Bonnie peers at him from darkened corners. The lights stay on.

The end of the year passes in a blur. Mike barely notices, until a late night channel surfing session lands him on the local news station.

_Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria closes its doors_ trails along the marquee on the bottom of the screen. The reporter on screen drones on – "Freddy's closes its doors for the last time. The restaurant, once an establishment beloved by children and adults alike, has suffered from a slew of bad press and low profits in the recent years... " – but Mike’s not paying any attention, eyes glued to the cheery yellow walls visible over the reporter's shoulder, _Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria!_ spelled out in red block letters above the entrance. A 'CLOSED' sign hangs on the door.

_Are you still in there?_ he thinks, fingers slack around the remote. The reporter mentions nothing of the titular bear or the other characters, nothing about the infamous "bad press" that had contributed to the restaurant’s downfall, just finishes her piece with a half-hearted, "Freddy's will be missed. Back to you." The station switches to a different story but Mike stares at the screen for another half an hour, mind blank but for one lingering thought.

_Are you in there?_

At work the next day he hears two of his coworkers talking about it, two teenage girls that spend more time gossiping in the back than dealing with the customers.

"I walked by it the other day," one was saying, the blonde with freckles across her nose. "It was so creepy. Everything's all boarded up and dark. It's supposed to be haunted, you know?"

Her friend – the brunette with glasses – scoffs. "People have been saying that for years, though."

"I wonder what happened with the robots, though," Freckles muses. "You know, the mascot things? Those were always so creepy... "

"Creepy?" Glasses rolls her eyes. "Gross, maybe... They smelled _horrible_. I hated sitting near the stage whenever we'd go."

"What do you think they'll do with them, though?" Freckles presses. "Can you imagine if they just left them there? In that smelly old building? Oooh, so creepy!"

"Who knows? And who cares?"

Mike flips burgers on autopilot, ears buzzing with the sound of the girls' voices. He imagines the place as it had always been to him, cloaked in darkness, the only light the dim glow of the tablet screen as he switched frantically between cams, the seconds of illumination whenever he switched on the door lights. There would be none of that now. The power at Freddy's would never come on again.

He’d made it out, survived his brief tenure there. He should be happy that the place is finally meeting its end. He should be _relieved_.

Why is it then, that he still feels trapped in that place?

//

In his dreams he's back in that office, sitting in the dark as the power cuts out. He waits, anxious and afraid, trying to keep both eyes on the doors, ears straining for the clank of metal feet, the snap of heavy jaws.

Music plays through speakers that should be dead, faint at first but growing louder and louder until it fills his ears, makes his teeth rattle. Mike presses his hands hard against his ears and staggers towards the far wall, keening as the volume climbs and climbs. His head feels like it's ripping in two. He slides down to his knees on the floor.

A heavy tread echoes outside the left door. Glowing eyes pierce the gloom.

Freddy.

He lumbers into the room, swinging his arms and grinning his razor smile. He’s the wrong color, golden instead of brown, and his eyes are wrong, green and human instead of plastic blue. Behind him trail five tiny figures, skipping along in the darkness. Mike can't see their faces, but he hears their voices.

_Freddy Fazbear, Freddy Fazbear_ , they sing, _coming to take us away!_

Behind the kids stumble the others – Bonnie swinging his guitar, Chica carrying a giant cupcake, Foxy brandishing his hook, and another Freddy, smaller than its golden twin. Blood pours from their eye sockets, trickles from every gaping mouth.

The room stretches to occupy the macabre train. Behind them the monitor flicks on, illuminating them all in a wicked, glaring light. The music reaches an ear-splitting, screaming crescendo.

The children vanish amid a chorus of screams, high-pitched and yowling.

It’s only as he’s jerking upwards in bed, his hands clawing at the sheets, that Mike realizes the screaming is coming from him. His neighbor’s banging on the wall, shouting about the noise, but all Mike can do is grasp the bat at his side and choke in lungfuls of hot, stale air, his knuckles white against the handle.

He can’t live like this anymore.

//

Mike stands in front of the pizzeria, watching. Waiting.

He stares at the faded red letters, the boarded up windows, the 'CLOSED' sign nailed to the front door, and wonders, not for the first time, what the fuck he's doing here.

The sun’s hanging high in the sky, boring down on the back of his head, making sweat bead up along the back of his neck. The pack on his back is heavy, the straps digging into his shoulders, and he stands for a long while, just staring at the empty shell of _Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria_. Well, not so empty.

_Just turn away_ , he thinks, his breath sticking uncomfortably in his throat. _Walk away_.

He swallows. He moves forward.

The windows are boarded up, but whoever did it did a shitty job. Mike is able to pry the wooden slats loose with a crowbar before he breaks the glass. Sunlight pours into the darkened interior, spilling across the dining room floor, the checkered tile, setting the thick layer of dust on every surface alight. Mike stands, and stares, and sees the scattered tables and chairs as he used to, through the lens of a grainy cam.

_Get the fuck out of here_ , he tells himself. He climbs inside.

His backpack hits the tile with a muted thump; digging through its contents, Mike pulls out the biggest flashlight he'd been able to find, switches it on with soft 'snick.' Artificial light floods the room, setting the darkened corners ablaze. Dust motes scatter in the wake of the beam.

The show stage stands silent to his right. It's empty, though Mike sees Bonnie's guitar lying forgotten by Freddy's mic stand. On his left the door to the backstage area hangs open, swinging loose on its hinges. He grips the handle of his bat in one hand and the flashlight in the other. It’s six-thirty now; the sun will set in an hour or so. He doesn’t plan to stick around that long.

He heads for the backstage door.

His footsteps seem too loud on the dusty linoleum, his breath harsh in the stale air. He strains his ears, listening for sound, for anything out of the ordinary – a heavy tread, laughter, music. There’s nothing.

Mike readies his bat before he steps backstage, flashlight trained straight ahead. Breathes deep, lets it out in a slow rush, and moves forward.

A low, mechanic groan stops him in his tracks.

The flashlight beams jerks, wavers, and settles on the table pushed back against the wall. There are spare animatronic heads lined up on the surface, grimy, most of them broken and decayed with rust. On the floor sits Bonnie. What’s left of Bonnie.

Mike jerks backward, raising his bat, but the animatronic makes no move to follow. It’s sitting on the floor, its half-lidded eyes trained on the open doorway, dimly lit and flickering even as Mike watches.

Bonnie’s lower jaw is gone; there are holes ripped in his chest and abdomen, machinery exposed through the ripped fur, wires like intestines spilling from the hole ripped in his gut. In his hands, clenched into fists at his sides, Mike can see scraps of metal, wire, and tufts of purple fur.

“Did you do this to yourself?” he croaks, moving forward, cautious. Bonnie makes a metallic whining noise; it hurts Mike’s ears, like nails on a chalkboard, but he’d be damned if he’s dropping the bat or his light to protect them.

Bonnie’s left hand moves, fingers creaking as they unfurl. A handful of synthetic fur and metal falls to the ground.

“You did, didn’t you?” He doesn’t know why he’s trying to communicate with the thing, what good it’ll do. He keeps talking though, inching forward, grip bruising around the handle of his bat. “Want to off yourself now that there’s no one to terrorize?”

Bonnie groans again, long and low; it trails off into static at the end, one of his eyelids drooping to close over one eye, the other glowing dimly in the flashlight beam.

Mike wonders what it must be like, left to rot in this hell hole, alone in the dark, never to see the light of day again. Trapped, really, and broken.

_Like you_ , some traitorous voice whispers in the back of Mike’s mind.

“I’m not like you,” he hisses, breath whistling through his clenched teeth. “I’m not broken, I’m not rotting away.”

Except he is. He _is_ , goddamn it. The nightmares, the hallucinations, the paranoia – all of it. He’s so fucked up he can barely even function anymore. He’s scared all the fucking time, he can’t sleep. He can’t _live_ , not like this. That was the point, though, wasn’t it, of this little field trip? Get some closure, get his fucking life back?

Maybe, to do that, he needs to take theirs away.

Maybe, to fix himself, he needs to help these hulking machines, these murderous animatronics, finish breaking themselves.

Mike raises his bat.

Bonnie’s other eye slips closed just as it cracks down over his head.

//

He finds Chica in the kitchen.

No surprise, there. He remembers how he’d used to hear her all the goddamn time, making those crunching noises, eating noises. He never could figure out what it was she was chowing down on.

She’s on her stomach, arms outstretched, her beak opening and closing with metallic _snics_. Around her are remnants of… Mike doesn’t know. Rotted meat, piles of half-chewed, moldy beef. Mike’s mouth fills with sour saliva at the cloying smell; he presses his sleeve to his nose, gagging on it.

Chica’s beak is caked with a noxious mix of rotted food, rust, and bits of metal interspersed with dingy yellow fluff. He can see where she’s been gnawing at herself, huge gaping bite marks in her arms, one of them so badly mauled it’s barely hanging off her body from a handful of flimsy, half-chewed wires.

Mike’s sneaker brushes up against a shredded tin can; it rolls across the grimy tile floor, and Chica’s eyes roll over towards him, cutting through the gloom.

Mike freezes in the beam of that stare, his knuckles tight around the handle of his bat. For a moment he’s back in that office, Chica’s wide eyes boring into him through the dirty window, and he has to shake his head to dispel the image, his pulse pounding uncomfortably in his throat.

Sweat crawls down his temples as Mike moves forward, avoiding the scattered cans and piles of rotten food. Chica’s eyes follow him, her beak still moving, sluggishly now. Occasionally he can see the double sets of her teeth, coated with gore and grime as she moves her mouth in a paroxysm of speech.

The closer he gets the worse the smell becomes, thick and rancid in the back of his throat, and Mike can barely stand to raise his bat instead of stuffing his nose into his sleeve against the stench.

Chica stares at the bat, watching it hover in the air above her head. Her beak stops moving, her damaged body relaxes against the dirty kitchen floor, and Mike’s shoulders flare in pain each time he brings the bat down over her lowered head.

//

He thinks about saving the office for last, but the right-side door is wide open, and a quick glance at his watch shows him that daylight is fading fast; it’s nearly seven now, and the thought of stumbling home in the dark sets Mike’s teeth on edge, even though he knows it shouldn’t. There won’t be anything left to fear in a few moments, after all.

He sees the poster first, _Celebrate_ stark and bright even in the dark.

He sees Freddy next.

He’s sitting on the floor, right in front of the desk. The fan’s been knocked over, its blades inches from the animatronic’s neck.

His head’s been ripped off, his open neck a mangled mess of twisted metal and wires. The head lays on its side by the bear’s leg, its eyes open but dim.

Mike nudges Freddy’s foot with his sneaker; the bear doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound.

“You beat me to it, didn’t you, Freddy?” he mutters, kneeling down, keeping a bit of distance between them still, can’t bring himself to move in any closer.

He feels disappointed somehow, like he’d been robbed of taking care of Freddy himself.

“It was my job,” he mumbles, barely realizes he’s saying anything out loud until the dust motes scatter in the wake of his breath. He laughs lightly, rubs the inside of his sleeve over his face. “You’re always getting in the way of me doing my goddamn job, aren’t you, Freddy?”

There’s no power running through the building, so he can’t shut the office doors like he wants to. Mike heads into the left-side hallway, and contents himself with not looking back.

//

He saves Pirate’s Cove for last.

God, he'd used to quake looking through that camera, seeing Foxy's eyes, that demented grin, **IT'S ME** mocking him from the sign out front. Knowing that he had seconds to close the door before the fox would be there, sitting there boxing his own ears to block out the sound of Foxy’s banging fists.

He pushes the star-speckled curtains aside with his bat, exposing the interior to the glare of the flashlight beam. It's the first time he's ever seen the area from the inside. The place is a mess, but he can imagine how it might have looked back in its hayday.

The floor is a deep shade of blue, scuffed all to hell now and covered with a layer of dust and grit. There are scratches in the paint, long gouges tapering off into points on either end. On the right hand side of the room is a replica of a ship, plastic flag bearing the tell-tale skull and crossbones motif one would expect on a pirate vessel. Artificial waves curl up against the hull.

On the right stands the entrance to a cave built into the wall, mounds of fake gold streaming from the opening. A sign out front reads 'Pirate's Cove' in spiky lettering.

Mike trains his beam on the cave. It’s not deep, doesn’t extend too far back, just a few feet or so. There’s more fake gold piled inside, a treasure chest sitting open on the right. Stretched out in front of the chest lies the mangled remains of Foxy the Pirate.

He’d always been in a constant state of disrepair, holes punched in his chest, wires sticking out of the open cavity, fur torn. Mike had always wondered what had happened to him, why Pirate’s Cove had been closed and why no one ever seemed intent on changing that.

Now, though…

“What a fucking mess,” Mike mutters, lowering his bat. There’s no need for it now. Foxy won’t be any trouble.

The animatronic’s sprawled on his stomach on the floor, his arms outstretched, both the claws on one paw and the hook on the other scrabbling at the floor, leaving scratches in the paint. He’d had to crawl his way in here, Mike knows, because his legs are nothing but mangled stumps, all that remains – torn wires, broken bits of metal, and pieces of matted fur – dragging uselessly along the floor.

Broken, like the others, save one thing.

Foxy’s eyes flare bright and sharp in the dark, not dimmed like Chica’s or Bonnie’s, not dead like Freddy’s. Awake. Aware. They zero in on Mike as he stands at the entrance to the cave, and Foxy’s jaw drags the ground as he starts to claw his way forward, inch by tortuously slow inch, toward Mike.

Mike almost laughs, even as a roiling mixture of terror and nausea sloshes in his gut. Foxy’s stuttered, sluggish gait across the floor now is nothing like his once frantic sprints through the hallways, but the memories assail him nonetheless. He has to forcibly remind himself that he doesn’t need a door between them to block off Foxy’s pursuit this time. He only needs to walk away.

But that’s not why he’s here.

“You thought you’d never see me again, didn’t you?” he rasps, standing his ground even as Foxy inches his way closer, the screech of his hook gouging lines along the floor inordinately loud in Mike’s ears. “Bet you thought you’d never see _anyone_.”

Foxy groans, long and loud, a staticky discharge that makes Mike wince. He stares at the animatronic’s mangled legs, wonders if Foxy had done the damage himself or if time and neglect had done the work for him. Almost feels pity, welling unfamiliar in his chest, at the fox’s pitiful attempts to reach him.

“It’s over,” he says softly, training the flashlight beam on Foxy’s scuffed, scratched face. He’s lost his eyepatch somewhere along the way, Mike notices. “ _Freddy’s_ is closed, you know. Out of business for good. You’re gonna rot in here.”

Foxy lets out a loud mechanical whine. The rusted point of his hook gouges one last gash in the floor before he falls silent, his jaw clanging noisily against the ground as his head slumps forward.

Mike rests his flashlight on the floor, pointing it toward Foxy so he can keep the animatronic illuminated. He approaches slowly, both of his hands clasped loosely around his bat.

“The others are gone,” he continues, his sneakers marking tracks on the dusty, dirty floor. “The doors are closed. They’ll probably tear this place down soon. You really want to stay here, like this? Alone?”

The keen that pours from Foxy’s gaping mouth is at once pitiful and grating. His eyes roll in their sockets, from the scattered remnants of his lair to Mike’s bat, the blunt head resting against the toe of his sneaker. He scrabbles at the floor with his nails, but it’s a weak gesture.

“It’s alright.” Mike doesn’t know who he’s talking to anymore; his throat feels tight, his eyes sore. “You don’t have to be alone in here. You can’t be. You have to go, okay?” He raises his bat, but he waits, breath sticking in his throat, waits until Foxy’s lids close slowly over his bright, bright eyes, waits until the animatronic slumps fully to the ground, silent. Accepting.

Mike brings the bat down.

//

He stands outside the remnants of _Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria_ , breathing in the clear, cool air. The sun’s sinking below the horizon, the burgeoning night air a balm against his overheated skin.

He’s sweaty and aching, his skin and hair and clothes covered in dirt and dust. His shirt has a rip in it from where he’d caught it on a piece of glass climbing back out of the window, and he’ll be unable to move for a week, his shoulders and back so sore already that merely hitching his backpack up over his arms makes him wince.

A woman walking her dog on the other side of the street shoots him a suspicious look and gives him a wide berth as she passes him by, but Mike only grins at her, tilting his head back as a breeze filters through his hair, dries the sweat on his face.

For the first time in weeks, he feels like he can _breathe_.

His eyes are wet, and the laugh that bubbles in his throat is at once giddy and hysterical in turn, but his steps are light as he walks away from the empty pizzeria, and he doesn’t look back.

 

 

That night, Mike shuts off the lights.


End file.
